Sunstorm

A Time Odyssey, Book 2

De: Stephen Baxter, Arthur C. Clarke

Narrado por: John Lee

Returned to the Earth of 2037 by the Firstborn, mysterious beings of almost limitless technological prowess, Bisesa Dutt is haunted by the memories of her five years spent on the strange alternate Earth called Mir, a jigsaw-puzzle world made up of lands and people cut out of different eras of Earth's history.Why did the Firstborn create Mir? Why was Bisesa taken there and then brought back on the day after her original disappearance?

Bisesa's questions receive a chilling answer when scientists discover an anomaly in the sun's core - an anomaly that has no natural cause, evidence of alien intervention over two thousand years before. Now, plans set in motion millennia ago by inscrutable watchers light-years away are coming to fruition, in a sunstorm designed to scour the Earth of all life through a bombardment of deadly radiation.

Thus commences a furious race against a ticking solar time bomb. But even now, as apocalypse looms, cooperation is not easy for the peoples and nations of the Earth. Religious and political differences threaten to undermine every effort. And all the while, the Firstborn are watching...

©2005 Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

much better than the first book in the series

I really think this book is worth the time you get bored in the first book of this series.
It's more about science, engineering, physics and astronomy.
just loved it and going forward to the third book.
the narrator is superb in this one.

Amazing Old School Imaginative Sci Fi

Amazing Old School Imaginative Sci Fi. Better than book one. Brevity is the soul of wit.

Excellent book

I kinda love how they refer to the math in a way that you want to do it yourself

Second book of an excellent series

As with the first of this series; I couldn’t put it down. I rarely maintain interest in entire series of books. I am eagerly starting the third. If you love science , world history, philosophy. History of world religions, all wrapped up into a package of science fiction tied with a bow of superb character development and writing, then this is for you.

Short story at best..

This book felt like paper cuts on my nerves. Skip to Book 3 and save yourself from a filler story to make a trilogy. Very poor story.

Great continuation

This book was a solid follow on to time’s eye. I really enjoyed all the new characters and it was very fleshed out and detailed. On to the third book for me!

Sunstorm

This story is an excellent follow on to the first book. I can't wait to get started on the third book in Clarke's trilogy.

Excellent

This is the strange case where book 2 is much better that the first 1.

Educated people won't War?

This is the second book of a series, but so little from the first book is used in this book, you really don't have to start with the first book if you don't want.

Neither Clarke or Baxter are known for character development. The are know for Science and showing the epic size of our Universe. This book is no different from the most of what Clarke writes, so if you like Clarke you will like this. I have always been interested in our Sun and there is a lot here on the Sun. If you are not into science or the Sun then you will not want this book.

I liked the old fashioned Can Do attitude of this book. I am not sure I have the confidence in the human race to work together, as suggested here, but it was nice to dream. I also believe having one big shield instead of several small shields, may have been a little old fashioned. In the eighties we thought one big lens for Hubble was the way to go. After putting it into space and having nothing but problems with the lens, we discovered that a group of smaller lenses working together would have worked better and that is the way our big telescopes are being built today.

Some may be offended by Clarke's views on religion. If you have read Clarke before you know he hates religion and blames them for the woes of the earth. He also makes it plain here again that people who believe in a Creator are Idiots. He also uses again, the Star of Bethlehem, to represent evil. I am able to look past this, but you might not. Clarke is dead now, so he is finding out the truth.

I was a little surprised by the anti Chinese sentiment in this book. I laughed at Clarke and Baxter's, couple of attempts at sex scenes. You could certainly tell two nerds wrote them. At the beginning there is an attempt to show sympathy for a pretty person being taken serious in a group of scientist. There was more feeling shown for an AI dying then for millions of people dying, or one scientist's own daughter. One AI was even the biggest hero. Clarke believes that if everyone was educated we would not have wars. I believe it would help, but Clarke has evidently not seen what happens when a group of tenured College PHD's, don't want someone with different political views entering there departments.

I often have different views on John Lee's strange voice and his lack of doing different voices, even between genders, but I felt he fit this book well.

Quite Good

There are many elements of this story I appreciate. The harder science look at how Earth might build some kind of defense against a threat of such an absolute apocalypse level is fascinating and I could imagine a young reader reading this and being swept up in the possibilities of a future where such impossible structures would exist.

There are some minor distractions, here is one that I found especially worrying, the date of the initial sun storm is June 9th, which most people would not notice, is 6-9, as in the sex number 69. And you, like me, might be saying, "that could be a coincidence"... well, I recall while hearing that date thinking, "That is distracting. At least he didn't put it on 4-20."

Wanna guess what date the second and more devastating sun storm occurs? April 20th. Stupid, minor author joke that happens in the same book which has a lengthy and lovely section talking about the age of miracles. Annoying.

Biggest complaint is how it hooks into the last book in the series and how different these two are in tone. The author seems to have no idea what to do with the one character from the first book that appears in this one as they appear in the narrative, dawdle around, and add nothing to the plot. I feel that had her reappearance to the story been at the very end of the book, telling the cast of this story the horrifying truth that the aliens called the "First Born" are the ones behind the sun storm and telling them about the events of the first book leading into the 3rd book would have been better. Would have also allowed this book and book 1 to be side-quels to one another rather than this one trying and failing to be a sequel.

Last thing, I don't think that the ultimate fallout from the sun storm was bad enough. While the death toll is horrifying, it was still not big enough for the kind of disaster that is the center of this story.